Expand the Vote Beyond a Frozen Few - New York Times

Expand the Vote Beyond a Frozen Few - New York TimesSeptember 30, 2005
Expand the Vote Beyond a Frozen Few

Before Americans get to their quadrennial carping about the shallow, frenetic presidential nomination process, they should begin pushing for a worthy proposal now before party leaders: Why not hold four regional state primaries spaced at a more thoughtful pace to better embrace the nation's diversity and let voters and candidates participate more substantively?

This approach, newly endorsed in a bipartisan study of election ills, would be an antidote to the pathetic current process, in which primaries are front-loaded with a frigid three-month vaudeville circuit that settles candidacies months before most voters can ever get to a ballot. Mind-numbing salvos of slime ads, canned bromides and hot-button outcries then fill the yawning interim.

The regional approach, with the interests of more varied states and voters at stake, would rein in cynical campaigners who exploit one group's prejudices in separate small states as the news media are instead watching the rest of America. The obeisance in Iowa to ethanol made from corn comes to mind as one unnecessary evergreen in the process, along with the sulfurous invocation of social issues by candidates at Bob Jones University in South Carolina.

For all the packaged cut-and-thrust, fewer than 8 percent of the nation's eligible voters cast ballots before the nominations were locked in concrete last year, according to a study commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III. The panel recently offered up its report, which contains a grab bag of ideas. Some of them were far from desirable - particularly an awful proposal for photo-identification cards for voters.

Even when it came to primaries, the commission cowardly proposed retaining the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as the first-in-the-nation shrines to the sort of "retail politics" that actually died out with black-and-white television. But at least an ensuing regional primary would finally put those states in proper perspective, and would offer a hope of inviting more voter curiosity and candidates' nuances to the fore.